


so quite new a thing

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:44:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The markets on Sah Kitri stretched almost an hour's walk in all directions from the citadel, attracting hawkers from worlds even Teyla hadn't heard of, selling goods and services so varied they easily have earned a raised eyebrow from Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so quite new a thing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sheafrotherdon for betaing!

The markets on Sah Kitri stretched almost an hour's walk in all directions from the citadel, attracting hawkers from worlds even Teyla hadn't heard of, selling goods and services so varied they easily have earned a raised eyebrow from Sheppard. None of them had exactly what Ronon was looking for. It wasn't surprising—not like there were many Satedans looking to carry out the old rites anymore—but it was disappointing. Ronon wanted to do this right. In the end, he settled for handing over one of his favourite throwing knives to an elderly woman sitting behind a prosperous-looking stall just off the main market street. In return, he got a gap-toothed smile and a carved box, filled with thin sticks of kohl in all the colours of the rainbow. He met up with Teyla and Lorne at the gate. Teyla had been successful, getting leads on new trading opportunities for the Athosians; Lorne had a new batch of canvas ready for stretching and priming. Lorne raised a curious eyebrow at the box, but Ronon stuck the box into one of the big pockets of his overcoat and didn't offer any information about it.

Back on Atlantis, Ronon headed straight for his quarters, where he left the box on the foot of their bed, stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower. Atlantis didn't have a cistern of rainwater for him to immerse himself in—not that he knew of, at least; McKay might know where he could find one, but Ronon didn't want the kind of full-blown curiosity such a question would provoke—so he made do with washing himself with slow and deliberate care. He scrubbed behind his ears and under his armpits, between each individual toe and at the backs of his calves. By the time he dried himself off, even the soft towels Jennifer had brought back from Earth felt a little rough against his tingling skin.

He sat on the bed and waited for Jennifer to come home, letting the anxious excitement and the sting of old memories wash over him—memories of the last time he'd done this, when he and Melena had been young and eager and full of plans. Ronon had loved Melena—loved her still—and he'd written his words to her with a steady hand. He didn't doubt that he could do the same with Jennifer—he did love her—but now he knew how much harder it was to lose something to which you'd pledged yourself. It was growing dark by the time Jennifer got home, kicking off her shoes as the door closed behind her and putting her laptop down on the desk.

"Ronon?" she said, squinting at him. "Why are you sitting in the dark?" She brought up the lights, and then blinked at him. "Why are you sitting _naked_ in the dark?"

He didn't really know how to answer—there were too many answers crowding up behind his teeth, making his tongue feel heavy and clumsy—so he settled for picking up the box and opening instead. Jennifer took a step closer, peering into it, and he could see from the clearing of her brow the moment when she understood. "Now? I thought you meant _maybe_, if, if you ever wanted—with me, that is." She was playing with the end of her ponytail, a gesture that Ronon had long ago realised was her tell when she was nervous.

Ronon shrugged. Now was as good a time as any, he thought. Both moons would be full in the Lantean sky for another three nights; he'd sat and stared at McKay until McKay had said _okay, okay, **fine**_ and written a program for him which calculated the positions of the stars as visible from north central Sateda. The Sisters were bright in the summer sky there, a sign as propitious as the way Ronon had felt that morning, turning over in bed to see Jennifer lying there next to him. He knew he hadn't asked her in so many words when he'd told her about the Satedan rites, but it had seemed right that it should be today—that he would be able to tell the world _here we are today; we will be happy together_. "Yeah," he said, "with you," and fought against the uncharacteristic urge to twist his fingers in the blanket.

For a long moment, he was afraid that Jennifer would say no—her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, her arms wrapped tight around her waist. Ronon knew he moved too fast for the Earthers sometimes, impatient with how cautious they were with life, that he could push them too far—but there was a reason why she was his Jennifer, because her jaw tightened, resolute, and she said "Tell me what we have to do."

She showered, pinned her hair up carefully, and sat next to him on the bed. Ronon could smell the soap she'd used, the faintly floral scent of her shampoo. Jennifer leaned into him, and the warmth of her body was a comfort when he tried to tell her what the rites meant—the stories people told to explain how they'd been passed down from the Ancestors, the forms they took. Jennifer let him try to speak, then put her hand on his wrist. "Ronon, it's okay if you don't want to say—you could show me, if you want?"

Her words were pitched low, her breath warm and raising goose bumps on the skin of his shoulder.

Something turned over, low in the pit of his stomach. "Okay," he mumbled, and let himself trust her, and reached for her. He lay with her and kissed her for a long while—on the mouth, on the small swell of her breasts, on the strong curve of her hipbone—soft, warm skin against his lips, his tongue, while her hands stroked soothingly along the length of his back, over and over. Despite his nerves, the feeling of having Jennifer in his arms was enough to make him grow hard, and he went willingly when she tugged him back up to kiss her.

"Most fun I've ever had at a wedding," Jennifer grinned against his mouth, letting him settle between her legs.

"Not like this on Earth?" Ronon said, quirking an eyebrow at her as he reached to take a stick of kohl at random from the box—the first that came to hand was a deep, rusty red, like the soil on the Telekainu plains.

"Not in Wisconsin, anyway. I don't think anyone's ever got naked at First Lutheran. Least, not since Ada Schmidt drank three glasses of sherry and had that—oh my." Jennifer pressed up into the hand he had splayed against her freckled belly.

Ronon pressed a closed-mouth kiss to her collarbone, and then wrote along the curve of it in his best, neatest print. Jennifer craned her neck, trying to look at what he was writing: three rows of waxy red that read, in Satedan, _the scent of naardus, the sweet smoke of alsamum, the taste of honey in water_. He wasn't sure if it was okay to use the modern spelling instead of the Old High versions of the rites, or to use the kohl instead of a fine-tipped brush and deep blue inks, but Ronon knew what this meant to him, and he supposed that was enough.

"What are you writing?"

"Naardus, alsamum—they're plants. Herbs. Supposed to burn them for purifying." Ronon traced out the words for her with the tip of his finger, showing her which syllable was which. "Satedan word for 'honey'—it's sweet, and when you drink it mixed with water, washes you clean."

Jennifer's brow creased a little. "Should we have some? I don't know about the herbs, but the mess should have some—"

Ronon shook his head. "They're symbols. Knowing what they mean is important, not having them." He held out the box to her. "Your turn."

Her eyes widened. "But I don't know what to say! I'm not exactly an expert in Satedan marriage ceremonies."

"So write what you want to promise." He shrugged and lay down on his side next to her. "That's the important part."

"Okay," Jennifer said, and smiled at him—the set of her mouth half nervous, half determined, a mirror of what he was feeling. She deliberated over the box for a long moment, pulled out a stick of blue-grey kohl, a match for the seas around Atlantis, then spent almost as long deciding where her words should go. Eventually she pulled his forearm towards her, let him rest his hand on her hip while she slowly wrote _I, Jennifer, take you, Ronon, to be my husband from this day forward_. "Not as poetic as you, but this is what folks say back home, I guess."

"I like it," Ronon said, and kissed her for a long moment, his eyelids falling shut at the way she moved to be closer to him. His erection was a pleasurable ache, pressed against the soft skin of her belly, and when Ronon took a grass-green stick of kohl from the box, it was to write the refrain over the sweet curve of her breast: _my hand is in your hand, o beloved; you have changed the path I walk_.

Jennifer responded with deep purple across the span of his chest—_to have and to hold from this day forward, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health_—punctuating her words with kisses to his jaw line. "Of course," she said between kisses, "as your physician, I'm going to have to ask that you limit the amount of time you have to be in the infirmary."

Ronon grinned at her. "Fine by me—never want to be there."

Jennifer huffed a little. "I know _that_—doesn't stop you from having to be there because you decided that getting a sword in your guts is a viable tactic."

"Didn't decide that," Ronon said. Technically, it was true—he'd been much more concerned with getting Sheppard out of that cage before the rope snapped—but he didn't want to get into this discussion again. It had been bad enough, coming to in the infirmary for a brief moment after the surgery—seeing Teyla standing there, her clothes still dark with his blood; seeing Jennifer, her jaw set and her concentration absolute and the traces of tears on both her cheeks. He tried to distract her—to distract both of them—from the memory of those weeks by sucking at that point on her throat that always made Jennifer moan.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Ronon Dex," Jennifer said, mock slapping him on the shoulder. "Don't think you can distr—oh _god_," she said, voice gone thick with arousal, and let him gently push her onto her back.

Ronon fumbled for the box without looking, and selected some kohl without looking. He wrote _the beat of my heart recalls your love_ in bright yellow along the curve of her ribs, careful not to let her shaky exhale smudge his words. He bowed his head and pulled his hair to one side, let her write _to love and to cherish, as long as I live_ in bright blue along the length of his spine, from the nape of his neck to the small of his back.

The moss-green stick broke in two while he was printing _like a tree, I bend towards you; like this, I love you_ across her stomach. Ronon had to finish it with the stub, the sharp edge of it tickling Jennifer and making her laugh. Lately, Ronon had found that he couldn't hear her laughter without grinning himself; could hardly remember a time when his cheeks had ached so often from smiling. He met her eyes, the curve of his mouth matching hers, and said, "I love you"; kissed the words on her stomach and moved down between her legs.

"This still traditional?" Jennifer's voice broke on a gasp, her hips rising up to meet him.

Ronon pulled his mouth back far enough to say, voice wry, "Could be, if you want." She was already wet, her thighs slick with it, and she pushed down greedily against him when he pressed two fingers inside her. He worked her slowly, deeply—crooking his fingers to hear how that made her breath come quicker, loving the way Jennifer's hands roamed impatient over his hair, his shoulders, whatever of him she could reach. His own erection hung heavy and insistent between his legs, but he loved bringing her slowly to orgasm, the thumb of his left hand working at her clit while he wrote lines of poetry on her thigh. Ronon's handwriting wasn't quite as neat as it had been before, the kohl blurred by sweat, but the deep brown script was still legible—still contained promises of love and affection, his name and hers written together.

When she came, she tightened her thighs around him, smudging the words so that only the two of them knew what they meant. "Inside me," Jennifer panted against his mouth when he stooped to kiss her, her fingertips hot and digging into his shoulders, "Please, please," and she tossed her head back and moaned when he guided himself into her.

Pressed this close to one another, with the aftershocks of Jennifer's orgasm around him forcing Ronon to bite at his lower lip in an attempt not to come too soon, the once crisp lines of the kohl on their skin soon became blurred and indistinct. Jennifer's hand, resting on his back, bore the imprint of _love and to cherish_; Ronon's chest was smeared with the bright green of _in your hand, o beloved_. There was something about being this close to her that made him want to close his eyes, to bow his head, and he kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of his mouth; breathed out her name as he came deep inside her.

When he came back to himself, Jennifer was rubbing at her clit with her fingers, her cheeks flushing pink with exertion as she chased her second orgasm. Ronon rocked slowly against her even as he softened, giving her the extra friction that she needed to shake against him, her face pressed against his shoulder. He kissed her when at last he pulled out, settling back against the pillows with her resting on his chest. They were silent for a long moment—his fingers tracing soothing circles into the nape of her neck, her small foot slowly rubbing up and down his calf—before Jennifer stirred and said, "So that's a traditional Satedan wedding, huh?"

"Pretty much," Ronon said, running his fingers lightly over the blurred kohl on her shoulders. He'd kept all the most important parts, anyway. _Wife_, he thought; then something occurred belatedly to him, and he shifted on the bed. "Anything you wanted to do? From Earth?"

Jennifer shook her head, her hair tickling his skin. "I never really was a fan of the white wedding look. Put me in one of those big dresses and I look like a meringue, not to mention that you never want to see my Cousin Ira try to do the electric slide. Can't really wear a ring as a surgeon, either." She hesitated, then sat up, her face unexpectedly solemn. "What would you think—" She reached out and touched the agrop's teeth tattoo that ran the length of his forearm, a stylised form of his family's crest. "It doesn't have to be the exact same, but I just thought it would be, well, it would be nice to have you with me."

Ronon blinked at her. He hadn't expected that, but—"Okay," he said, voice gone hoarse, "okay."

"And you know, you can always use it to freak out Rodney and the Colonel." Her smile was broad and brilliant, tinged with a little bit of mischief. "Tell them it means I've joined your biker gang."

Ronon didn't know what that meant, but the smile on her face was contagious. "Not Teyla?"

Jennifer shook her head, tangled hair falling loose from its pins. "No point. She's smart enough to see the truth right away."

"What's that?" Ronon said, trying to be as deadpan as possible while she settled herself over him—bare breasts brushing against his chest, hips meeting his and causing his cock to stir once again.

Jennifer made a face, mock considering. "Could be that I love you, husband."

"Oh, that," Ronon said, "Already knew _that_"—laughed when Jennifer mock-pummelled him with a pillow, and kissed her while the words on their skin rubbed in, became intangible and always-present: _from this day forward; you have changed the path I walk; as long as I live; like this I love you, love you, love you._


End file.
